Call Center Excellence: Customer & Performance Management

Single User: Authorizes use by the person who places the order or for whom the order was placed.

Sitewide: Authorizes use of the report for a geographic site. All people at site can view the report for a year and copies can be printed.

Corporate: Authorizes use for the entire company for a year and copies can be printed. No limitations for usage inside the company.

The primary objective of all call centers is to provide impeccable customer service, often for organizations that support and manage a huge number of products and services. Most companies find the task of providing enhanced customer service along with order management and technical support for a large and diverse number of items extremely difficult. Best Practices, LLC launched this timely study to help companies overcome this critical knowledge management challenge.

This benchmarking research study probes critical call center systems that support productivity, effectiveness, service, and execution excellence to help companies better serve these products and manage key customer groups. Specifically, this research focuses on the following key areas:

Fifty-eight top business leaders at 56 global companies form the benchmark class of this multi-industry study. Most participating call centers support national or global organizations.

The vast majority of call centers support more than one business function. Virtually all benchmark call centers fulfill a customer service role and a majority also provide order management or technical help support.

Sample Key Findings

Product & Service Management Complexity: Many benchmark companies face complex product management challenges in supporting large numbers of products and services that can range drastically in price at a single call center. More than 1/3 of benchmark call centers support highly expensive products and services of more than $100,000. At the same time, more than two-thirds of call centers support large number of products and services (ranging from hundreds to hundreds of thousands). The vast majority of call centers fulfill multiple service roles for these diverse product and service groups: 95% support customer service in addition to some combination of order management, technical help, and sales.

Differentiated Service Levels: Differentiated service levels are a common tactic for managing customers of varying value to the enterprise: More than half (55%) of benchmark call centers provide some form of differentiated service to elite and high value customer groups. Benchmark companies most often segment customers according to the following – not mutually exclusive – categories: interaction type (56%), customer value (53%), and account type (44%).

Most Companies Do Not Track Multi-Call Resolution: Only 39% of benchmark call centers track the percentage of customer interactions that require multiple calls to be fully resolved. According to this group, 29% of all customer interactions on average require multiple calls to achieve full resolution.